Contact, and a dying of machine noise that had been imperceptible before. More movement but with a different feel, heavier than the cushiony grace of lighter-than-air, as the airship established negative buoyancy and sank into its cradle; more chunking noises, as the fuel and gas lines connected. The scene outside sank to four stories above ground level, then pivoted slowly as the cradle turned the airship and drew it toward the waiting terminal. There were three others with their noses locked into the huge cone-shaped depressions in the giant building’s wall. The Doulos glided into the fourth docking bay and halted; there was a whine as a ten-meter-broad section of the forward window slid up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Home—in a way, Marya thought, as they walked through the gate into the terminal. France. The country where we were conceived.
This terminal was post-War, pure Domination. Probably built in the early ’50s to a standard pattern. A huge barrel-vaulted passenger terminal, the coffered ceiling in pale blue and silver-gilt tiles; the walls were murals, landscapes, the floor streaked gray marble. Pillars around the walls, trained over with climbing plants. The Citizens’ section of the great building was relatively small; most of the traffic was over the other side of the low stone balustrade. There it was busy, swarming even. Most of the serfs there were in overalls of varying cut, livery, color-coded Combine suits with identifying logos on the backs. Or uniforms, green for SD internal-security, dove-gray for the serf component of the Directorate of War. Management level, authorized to travel alone.
And a coffle, forty or fifty people crouched within a rope barrier. Young adults with children, and a few ranging up to middle age, in cheap cotton overalls or blouses and skirts. They were mostly dark, with high cheeks and slant eyes: Asians, brought in from the main reservoir of surplus labor in the Far East. Nantes was a shipbuilding center, and Intelligence said that the submarine yards were being adapted to produce components for the second generation of Draka pulsedrive spaceships. The nuclear-powered deep-space vessels were more like ships than aircraft; no need to shave ounces when total payloads were well over five thousand tonnes.
Enough. Not your mission. She forced herself not to notice how a woman grabbed her child and winced as a guard walked by with a shockrod. They walked across to an information kiosk. The clerk covered his eyes and bowed, then smiled.
“You will, Masters?” He pronounced it mastahire, a Frenchman. A little overweight, unremarkable. The number stood out below his ear, glaring. His fingers hovered over a keyboard below the stone-slab counter; there was a screen on their side as well.
“Hotel Mirabelle,” Fred said. “And a car, please. Four-seater, suitable fo’ country drivin’. And a weapons store.”
“Phew,” Fred muttered. His sister could read his thought: Made it. Another milestone: nothing flagged on the Security net attached to their identities.
Marya stopped with him at the bottom of the stairs, and took two glasses of mineral water from a refreshment stand. They drank, hardly noticing the taste except that it wet dry throats, looked about. They were in a broad corridor, open to the roadway in front and lined by shops at their back. The serfs who moved about them mostly looked to be personal servants on errands, or airship haven staff. Steamcars were pulling up and leaving, parcel-delivery trucks, boxy little electric town runabouts. The Draka they saw were largely travellers, intent on their destinations.
Safe, she thought—or as safe as they could be on enemy soil. That had been something it took the OSS a long time to learn: that an agent was safer and more effective posing as a Citizen than as a serf. It went against common sense. There were so many more serfs, but most of them were plantation hands, or compounded workers; they just didn’t move very much. Most of the ones who did travel were tightly integrated into some organization, known faces, and for a serf the Domination was a bureaucratized labyrinth, with monsters waiting at every corner to eat you if you made a wrong step . . .
Whereas a Citizen had fewer day-to-day constraints than the average American, if you didn’t count things like the right to open a newspaper. Once that had mattered little, when the Domination and its ruling caste were smaller. But the Citizen population was no longer the tiny tight-knit band it had once been. Seventy-odd million was more than enough to be anonymous if you kept moving and avoided your supposed hometown.
They returned the glasses and walked into Sanderton’s Arms and Hunt Supplies. “Donal Green,” the man said, gripping their wrists. “Trooper, Special Tasks, Long-Range Reconaissance, retired. Late of Mobaye-North.”
That was a province north of the Congo river, thinly settled. Probably a hunter; it would go with the military specialty. There was an interval for the usual pleasantries. A black came up behind the Draka, and waited with something of the same relaxed patience.
“What can I do fo’ y’all, Citizens? Sidearms?”
Fred had an uncomfortable feeling that the remote brown eyes were recording them both inch by inch. It prickled between his shoulder-blades; machinery was tireless, but it only asked the obvious questions, and it had no intuition. Every contact with a potential informant risked bringing those uniquely human facilities into play.
“Yes, please. Just back from a trip outside the State.” To Draka, there was only one. “We’re doin’ some huntin’ as well,” he said.
“Ah.” Genuine interest in the Draka’s eyes. “Local? We’ve got some fine boar, deer, wolf, and leopard territory here abouts. Or if y’all’re interested, my family runs a wild-country outfit down in Mobaye-North.”
“Sorry. We’re booked, fo’ the Archangel Reserve.”
More than a little interest now. “Tiger?”
“No, bushmen.” The ideal cover story, for someone buying what they needed.
There were still bands of partisans, Finnish and a few Russians, in the great taiga forests that stretched from the northeastern Baltic up into the Arctic Circle: bushmen, in Draka dialect. The OSS even had contacts with them, few and sporadic, when a submarine could elude the ever-improving surveillance. Few Draka had ever wished to settle in those remote and desolately cold regions, and even the timber Combines worked only the most accessible parts. The military had hunted down the most dangerous bands in the early ’50s, and as for the rest . . . a Citizen who wanted game more exciting than any on four legs could book a tour. It even made sense, for a people who hunted lion with cold steel. One of the many ways used to keep the edge from rusting in an era of peace.
Not peace, he told himself. Just an interval between battles. To the Draka, there would be no peace until they ruled the human universe. Or until we kill the last one.
“Lucky you,” Donal Green said. “Y’all be wantin’ somethin’ special, then. Price range?”
“Show us what you’ve got,” Fred replied.
A wide grin. “As it just so happens . . . Bokassa, fetch the new models.” He led them to one of the examination tables. “Now, we’ve gotten a shipment of the latest stuff. They’re retirin’ the Improved Model Holbars now, you’ve probably heard, replacin’ it with a caseless round? Well, the prototype production run got sold, and bought up an’ customized down in Herakulopolis.” That was the city by the dam across the straits of Gibraltar. The black man arrived with a case, folded it back. His master lifted the weapon within free.